A Florida dentist is taking advantage of nearby theme parks to recruit staff and learn more about customer service and engagement.
Nick White, DMD, serves patients at Lake Mary Pediatric Dentistry in Florida. He recently joined the Becker’s Dental + DSO Review Podcast to discuss how his practice is tackling staff recruitment and patient care.
Editor’s note: Responses were lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: Has your practice been doing anything differently to recruit more staff?
Dr. Nick White: We’ve always taken pride in really treating our staff very well, whether it’s through pay, whether it’s through bonuses [or] whether it’s through just fun stuff we do in the office. We have staff outings we like to do. I’m lucky because I live in Orlando, so we have amazing theme parks where we’ll have some staff training days to go have some fun but also pay attention to how certain theme parks interact with their customers and try to bring some of those concepts back to the office.
[We make] sure the staff gets in and out on time. We’re not keeping them over way past their lunch hour [or] way past the end of the day. A lot of my staff have families of their own and kids they need to get to. So, we really take great pride in being a family-oriented office and really making the staff feel like they’re part of our extended family. That’s always helped. It gets more competitive with so many offices fighting for a short number of staff that we’ve really seen a significant increase in Florida as far as pay scale goes for both assistants and hygienists.
Q: Can you tell me more about the theme parks visits and what you’ve learned about customer service during those days?
NW: We’re blessed with three really significant theme parks, but I think the two main ones are obviously Disney World and Universal Studios. We’ve pretty much visited every Disney and Universal park with the staff, usually twice a year — once in the spring and once in the fall. It’s not just to go have fun. Believe me, we do go in there and have fun and have a great time on these days, but we also have specific instructions for them when they get to the park. What do they notice when the staff is interacting with some of the customers or park guests? How do they deal with somebody who’s upset? How do they make somebody smile? How do they go out of their way to help engage those park guests? How can we do that back in our office? We’ve had some really great feedback when the staff comes back and we sit down and discuss what we saw and what we learned, and we’ve been able to implement several of those strategies in our practice. It’s really paid off.
